(According to information from the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, Nos 22: 18 April 1976, and 23: 16 June 1976.)
On 28 November 1975, after a football match in Vilnius won by the local team Zalgiris, a crowd of 2,000 marched twice round the stadium and headed for the town centre, chanting ‘Zal-gi-ris’ and singing Lithuanian songs. After going down the main street, the demonstrators surrounded the block which contains the KGB building. They were dispersed with the aid of troops which were specially summoned. Some of the participants were arrested.
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After a Radio Vatican broadcast about the persecution of the folk-song club in Vilnius, Lithuanian radio began to give out daily announcements about the club’s activities. When people who turned up for non-existent events because of these announcements began to express their annoyance, the false announcements had to be stopped.
At the beginning of May, Daunoras, an administrator at the Vilnius House of Trade Unions, suggested to club members Aldona Katkauskaite and Virgija Adamantiene that they should write an article denying the assertions made by Radio Vatican; he promised to supply the club with costumes for concerts and to allow it to participate in the Baltic folksong festival. They refused.
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The Lithuanian village of Smilgiai (Belorussian SSR) was visited by ethnographers from Vilnius. The local inhabitants listened with pleasure to Lithuanian songs and stories about Lithuania and eagerly bought Lithuanian books.
An official of the village soviet turned up and asked the ethnographers for their passports. Then, threatening them with arrest, he told them ‘not to arouse nationalist feelings’ and go away.
Tsironka, the chairman of the village soviet, forcibly confiscated cameras from two girls taking pictures of old buildings, and exposed the film.
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In May, Jadviga Petkevičiene, a nurse at Siauliai maternity home, was taken off the Kaliningrad-Moscow train in Vilnius by KGB officials led by Major I. Markevičius. When she was searched (according to a statement by Major Markevičius, they were looking for anti-Soviet literature), nothing was found. Major Markevičius questioned Petkevičiene as to why she was visiting Moscow, reproached her for being present outside the courtroom during the trial of Kovalyov, and for meeting the ‘Muscovites’. After the search and the ‘talk’, Petkevičiene left for Moscow on the next train.
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Vidmantas Povilonis, who returned in March 1975 from the camps of Mordovia, obtained a job in September. Soon he became a senior quality-control engineer.
In March the management told Povilonis that, at the request of the KGB, he was being dismissed, as a person who had no right to be in authority over others (there is an old note in his work-book: ‘Dismissed at the request of the KGB from the Lithuanian branch of the All-Union Research Institute for the Butter and Cheese Industry’).
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On 9 April 1976, the Kaunas KGB returned to Monika Gavenaite (CCE35) some of the books confiscated during a search on 26 November 1974. When she asked for the return of The Great Crossroads by B. Brazdzienis [note 51], and Problems of the Lithuanian Character, the KGB official replied that these were political in content.
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In a declaration dated 15 February 1976, addressed to Brezhnev and Kosygin, priests of the Vilnius archdiocese ask once again (see CCE 40) for Bishop J. Steponavicius to be allowed to resume carrying out his duties.
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In February 1976, at an all-republic atheist seminar in Vilnius, the participants were informed that the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church (LCC Chronicle) is edited by Bishop Steponavicius, who lives in exile (in Zagare), that some of its issues are not criminal in nature, and that the LCC Chronicle is brought out in a small edition inside Lithuania itself, but is duplicated in Poland.
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During an interrogation at the local KGB headquarters, Sukys, the chairman of the Salos church committee, was accused of working for the LCC Chronicle.
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On 9 September 1975 a cemetery chapel in the Agailiai woods, recently restored by the local inhabitants, was destroyed. Its destruction was overseen by Berzinis, deputy chairman of Siauliai district soviet executive committee.
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When E. Gelambauskiene refused to pay 50 roubles for the destruction, against her will, of a cross she had put up beside her house (CCE 40), the administration department of the district soviet executive committee brought charges against her. In court it turned out that not one of the 400 workers employed by the Department had agreed to destroy the cross, so that it had been necessary to employ ‘drunks from the streets’ for this work and to pay them whatever they asked for fifteen minutes’ work (50 roubles).
The Chronicle does not know how the trial ended.
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On 10 March 1976 police officials detained the priest Juozas Zdebskis (CCEs 21-24, 27, 32, 36, 37) while he was driving through Vilnius. In the psychiatric hospital on Vasaros street, where he was taken by the police, his pulse was taken and a report was drawn up, alleging that he was slightly drunk. In spite of insistent requests by Zdebskis, they refused to do a blood test on him.
Zdebskis was fined and deprived of his licence for 18 months.
Protests have been written by five priests, by Zdebskis’s parishioners (318 signatures), by Vytautas Vaiciunas, and by Zdebskis himself. All these declarations emphasized that Zdebskis is a complete teetotaller.
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At the beginning of 1976 the inhabitants of the village of Didiiesalis invited their parish priest. Father K. Garuckas, to visit their homes. On 25 February Garuckas fulfilled their request.
On 3 March he was invited to the district soviet executive committee, where deputy chairman A. Vaitonis and KGB district chief Paskevicius told him that priests are not allowed to visit believers in their homes. When asked to point out the law relating to this, Vaitonis took out a piece of paper, but would not allow it to be reproduced or even to be read properly. Paskevicius also threatened to deprive Garuckas of the right to conduct services for three years.
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The Pasvalys district paper Darbas reported on 13 May 1976 that the Commission to Check on the Observance of the Laws on Religious Cults had ‘warned’ Father Z. Uzdavinys about organizing religious teaching for minors and about the fact that minors often serve in his church during services.
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In the hospital of Birzai, on 3 January 1976, Doctor Janulis told the patient A. Norkute, ‘As you invited the priest to visit you yesterday, Chief Doctor Dauguvietis has ordered you to be discharged.’
And although her health had grown worse, they stopped her treatment and sent her home. On the very same day, Miss Norkute sent a telegram to the Minister of Health. The next day, a doctor visited Norkute and continued her treatment at home. On 12 January Norkute thanked the Minister in a special letter.
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In the town of Taurage, Montvilas, a newspaper vendor, sold a number of Christmas cards reproduced as photographs. He was sacked.
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In Kaunas, A. Batackas, a Candidate of Physics and Mathematics and a lecturer at the Agricultural Academy, has been retired early because of ‘religious prejudices’. [This item contains several errors, listed in CCE 43. It should read: ‘In Kaunas, Antanas Patackas, a Candidate of Physics and Mathematics and an associate professor at the Agricultural Academy, was removed from his job and banned from any job in teaching, for his “nationalism’’ and his “unsuitable ideology’’.’]
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On 16 February 1976, the anniversary of the proclamation of Lithuanian independence (1918), pupils of Veisiejai school were present at a liturgy requested by their parents in the church at Slavantai. When the pupils returned to Veisiejai, they were grabbed by the school’s headmaster Stabingis and two teachers, who made the children go to the school and write explanations. At the same time the children were threatened with some sort of ‘electric shirts’.
The next day three investigators arrived at the school. The children were interrogated about what they said to the priest during confession. Statements were wrung from them, alleging that the parish priest of Slavantai had said during his sermon, ‘Long live independent Lithuania!’
As a result of threats and intimidation, some children wrote what was dictated to them, 14-year-old Gintautas Soroka was beaten up by investigator Zinkevicius. When he left the office, he tried to commit suicide.
The parents of pupils at secondary schools in Veisiejai and Liepalingis have sent a protest about what occurred to the Procurator of the Lithuanian SSR.
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At School 41 in Vilnius the teacher Janina Petkevičiene took a diary away from her pupil Simonaite and gave it to the headmaster. From the diary it became clear that the girl was a believer. Headmaster V. Banevisius told Simonaite to answer his questions truthfully, as a believer should not lie. He asked her which church she went to, which priests she saw there, whether the priest gave away money, where she bought a prayer-book, and so on.
In the school in the town of Sasnava on 24 April the teacher Zimantiene, in questioning pupil E. Navikaite of Class 10 about her homework, demanded that the girl should list the surnames of pupils who accompanied her in the Easter procession. When the girl refused, she gave her a ‘one’ (the lowest mark). She explained to the pupil’s mother: ‘We need this for atheist propaganda.’
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The third issue of the journal Ausra has come out (see CCE 39).
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See also the section ‘Arrests, Searches and Interrogations’.
A Chronicle of Current Events 